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Thursday, March 2, 2017

Chinese Coins in the Bank and KofB #14

A bit of bad timing. Kaleidoscope of Butterflies sneaked up while I was focused on Chinese Coins so not much to show. Still no butterflies in my area although the milkweed is growing well.

Last August, the Chicago Tribune noted the drastic decline of monarch butterflies in 2016. Their migration starts this month. Please add milkweed and nectar plants to your garden. Chris Clarke of KCET wrote an article about the benefits of gardening with native plants.

Yep, the Coins have been deposited at my niece's house. Here's the finished Chinese Coins after a quick wash and dry.

Improvisational Chinese Coins quilt

Since Spiderweb is mainly free-motion quilting, I decided on a simpler walking-foot design for this time: parallel lines. I started them across the quilt about 1 to 1.5-inches apart.

Beginning parallel quilting lines about 1-1.5" apart

Then I returned and added a quilting line between every other set. This maintained the look of the parallel lines, increased the quilting density (which might help reduce the strain on those long seam lines, and added a bit of textural variety.

Spiderweb quilting has been a bugaboo but this was quick and easy. It only took two days to quilt. I need to quilt like this more often.

Filling in with an additional line between every other pair

The middle column contains only three fabrics: blue, yellow and a floral Marimekko. I was able to include the informational text on one of the coins because it was printed far enough away from the selvedge.

Detail of Marimekko informational text

A bright blue binding added more color. I think it needed the pop.

Chinese Coins binding and quilting details

Now this quilt graces its new home in Pflugerville. Don't know where that is? Many songs are written about beautiful cities around the world but Pflugerville is a small, farming community north of Austin. Here's video of one by the Austin Lounge Lizards.

Here are stats about Pflugerville's Chinese Coins.

Quilt Details

Size: 57" x 75"

Design: Improvisational Chinese Coins

Batting: Mountain Mist Cream Rose 100%cotton

Thread: Gutermann cotton, light blue

Quilting: Parallel lines with walking foot on domestic machine

Other sights in the area include Cele's BBQ restaurant (pronounced Seal.) It's been used as a location of several movies including Second Hand Lions {which I've seen} and Texas Chainsaw Massacre {which I have no plans to see.} Great barbeque beef, ribs and sausage but you have to bring your own sides. Really.

Cele Community Center and BBQ restaurant

Another day we drove over to The Oasis on Lake Travis where you can see some of the most gorgeous sunsets in the world. I haven't eaten there in years - before it burned. Still gorgeous views although we were there at midday rather than sunset.

View of Lake Travis from The Oasis

There's more artwork than I remember, including this piece.

Spaceship Oasis art installation at The Oasis

Artwork abounds throughout the region. This mural decorates the wall of Google Fiber Austin.

Mural at Google Fiber Austin

There's still time to link up with AHIQ, too. Share your progress with Chinese Coins or another improvisational or utility quilting here.

15 comments:

Your Chinese Coin quilt turned out wonderful! I do like the Marimekko selvage! I still have to do research to find out if deer eat milkweed. I email that monarch organization but they never got back to me.

We do think alike; what a kick to leave the selvedge on curtains. I wanted to climb in the spaceship. Without kids I had no excuse. Walking foot on the. Ions was quick and easy. Also, the out of town visit spurred me on. In contrast, spiderweb is slower than molasses in January. Keeping my ego in check. ;-)

It makes me unreasonably happy to see you leaving that selvedge on. I also like the brighter blue of the binding a lot - just gives a little extra lift and pulls everything together nicely.You finished so fast too!

Thanks, Kaja. I like that bit of selvedge way out of proportion to its area. I'm glad you agree about the blue binding. This quilt seemed to need a strong outer line. I machine sew the binding on most quilts I give away because I figure they will get heavier handling. So it only takes a couple of hours to attach. And for change, this was a very simple quilting design, too. So I finished before we had to leave.

After a look at the images of your beautiful quilts Ann, the very first thing I noticed was the stack of Chinese Coins on the top facade of the community centre, haha! Your quilt turned out just perfect and I think you made an inspired decision with the colour of the binding. I feel a little envious of your niece! x Catch up with you again later today, got to get on my bike now!